Reincarnated with the Country System

POV

...

War, we thought, would remain a distant thunder beyond the horizon.

But that was only a few days ago.

That evening, the sun bled red across the battlements. Traders from the northern villages stumbled in with mud-stained boots, eyes wide, voices trembling. They spoke of Kaen's army moving fast—too fast—like a tide breaking over the land. Villages burned behind them. Whole fields of wheat trampled into ash and smoke. Still, the captain of the guard told us not to panic. "They'll not breach us in a day. Our walls are the pride of Vangal. Sleep soundly."

I tried. Gods know, I tried. But sleep did not come easy that night.

The city groaned in its slumber. Dogs barked at nothing. The forge-fires hissed long into the dark. I lay on my straw mat listening to the wind howl through shutter cracks, and I swear the air already smelled faintly of ash.

The next day, Prince Kaen's army besieged the city. They demanded surrender, but it was naturally refused.

I remember standing in line for flour, listening to the guards boasting near the main road. One of them leaned on his spear and laughed. "Kaen's boys won't crack these stones. We'll hold for months—years, if we must. By the time they break a hole, they'll starve." His words lifted the spirits of those around him. People nodded. They grunted in agreement. Even I, who had no love for lords or princes, felt a foolish spark of hope.

But the very next day—we felt the terrible reality of war.

The attack began at dawn. Windows shattered. Chickens burst squawking from their cages. My neighbors screamed before they even knew what had happened. From the northern wall rose a bloom of fire, black and red against the morning sky. Kaen's siege engines had arrived—machines none of us had ever seen before. Not the old catapults of our fathers' wars, but thunder-breathing beasts, hurling bolts that cracked towers in a single shot.

The guards who once laughed now ran.

I ran with them—not toward the walls, but away. My wife clutched our daughter, pressing her face into her skirts. My son stood frozen, hands trembling around a wooden toy sword, too young to understand, too old not to.

The second strike hit closer. Stone screamed as it split. Dust rolled through the streets like choking fog.

Shouts filled the air: "To arms! To the wall!" But already, the people knew. This was not a siege of months. This was not a slow grinding war. Kaen had come like a storm, and the storm was here.

I forced my family into the cellar beneath the baker's shop, where dozens of neighbors huddled. Children wailed, mothers prayed. Old men cursed the city lord for backing the wrong brother. Someone whispered, "If we had chosen Kaen, none of this would be happening." Another spat back, "Better his brother than a traitor." Words turned to arguments, arguments to shoving. Fear made us enemies of each other.

Above us, the city roared and broke.

I stole a glance outside after an hour—though it felt like a lifetime. The northern wall was already crumbling. Fires licked at rooftops, spreading faster than water could be thrown. I saw a soldier clutching his entrails, stumbling like a drunk man until he fell and did not rise. I saw a horse screaming with its legs broken, kicking wildly in the street until a merciful blade silenced it.

This was war. Not glory.

Just screams, and blood, and the sound of everything you love being torn apart.

The worst was the moment the walls themselves shuddered.

I could feel it in my bones. The pounding rhythm of the cannons never stopped, a drumbeat of iron and fire. Every impact shook the stones, each blast a tearing groan as mortar cracked and dust poured from ceilings.

The lord's banners still flew from the citadel, but what good were banners? The defenders who had sworn they could hold for months were already worn thin after only two days.

I did not see Prince Kaen himself, but I felt his presence in the way his men attacked—from two kilometers away, relentless, merciless, as though the city were not a city but merely a target to be broken down piece by piece. They did not need to fight us in the streets. Their unknown weapons did the work for them. Homes collapsed. Roofs caved in. Fire spread from house to house. And when people fled into the open, trying to reach wells or shelters, the bombardment claimed them as easily as soldiers would have. Old women crushed beneath falling stones. Children burned in the wreckage. A neighbor of mine, a man who once lent me firewood in winter, fell screaming when his shop collapsed on top of him, crushed by a single strike.

And what of the city lord, the man who had sworn he would defend us? He hid in his castle. That's what we heard whispered in the cellars. The lord and his household locked themselves away while we—the nameless, the powerless—bled for their loyalties.

By nightfall, the city was no longer whole.

The streets burned. The walls cracked in places where no crack had ever been seen before. The citadel itself glowed with firelight, its silhouette wreathed in smoke. Smoke stung my eyes until I could hardly see, but I could still hear. Gods, I can still hear it—the sobbing of mothers searching for lost children, the groans of the wounded calling for help that would never come.

War, I learned, has no sides for men like me.

It does not matter whether Kaen wears the crown or his brother does. It does not matter whose banners fly. To us, the bakers, the smiths, the farmers, the beggars—it is always the same.

We suffer.

The princes play their game of thrones, but the pieces on the board are our lives.

And I know tomorrow will be worse.

The city has not yet fallen. But already, it feels lost.

A few days ago, we lived. Today, we survive. Tomorrow… tomorrow, perhaps we endure.

If the gods are merciful.